Defibrillation, also known as electric shock or external cardioversion is the medical procedure involves passing voluntarily portable defibrillator and brief electrical current in the heart when it presents certain arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation, and to restore normal heart rhythm.

By extension, sometimes called defibrillation chemical or pharmacological cardioversion or when chemical or pharmacological correction of atrial fibrillation (ie, finger) is performed by the administration of drugs.

The first attempts at resuscitation by electrical shock dating from 1788, without the ale is naturally concept of mode. The rhythm disorder responsible for sudden death is suspected in 1849 by Ludwig and Hoffa and the term fibrillation is created by the French Edmé Vulpian 1874.

In 1899, we note that we can induce ventricular fibrillation by electric shocks and can stop this latest suit.

Carl Wiggers first system tests portable defibrillator on animals in the late 1940s.
Claude Beck did the first defibrillation AC successfully during an intervention on the heart in 1947. Naum Gurvich in 1939 proves that the use of a DC is more effective and less dangerous. This technique is widely used later in the USSR but only a few decades later in Western countries. It also tests the biphasic shock for the first time. It designs and the first external defibrillator since 1952.